Part III: Becoming an Artist

Making the transition from beginner to advanced is technically challenging. Learning your camera so well that you know it inside and out can take years. Learning what every slider and Lightroom and every dialog box in Photoshop do can take a lifetime. But, none of that will make you an artist.

Becoming an artist is philosophically challenging. You have to go from making stunning images (technically hard) to making images that say something (emotionally challenging). How do you make an image express emotion? How does one visually describe their feelings? That's what this section is all about.

This part of the journey is not for the faint of heart. Along the path you will be wracked with frustration and self-doubt. You'll spend an entire week working on an image, only to see it get one quarter of the likes as the over saturated HDR piece you posted last week that you spent all of 5 minutes on. You'll become nervous to show people your new work because to show it is to bare your soul. Your images will stop being pretty and start being meaningful. They'll become an expression of your inner-self. This part of the journey will last the rest of your life. It will not be easy. But, in the end, it will absolutely be worth the effort.